by Dan Simmons
Kassad shook his head again.
“We need to go,” said Moneta. “The Shrike cannot follow us here. These warriors have enough to contend with without dealing with this particular manifestation of the Lord of Pain.”
“Where are we?” asked Kassad.
Moneta brought a violet oval into existence with a golden ferule from her belt. “Far in humankind’s future. One of our futures. This is where the Time Tombs were formed and launched backward in time.”
Kassad looked around again. Something very large moved in front of the starfield, blocking out thousands of stars and throwing a shadow for scant seconds before it was gone. The men and women looked up briefly and then went back to their business: harvesting small things from the trees, huddling in clusters to view bright energy maps called up by a flick of one man’s fingers, flying off toward the horizon with the speed of a thrown spear. One low, round individual of indeterminate sex had burrowed into the soft soil and was visible now only as a faint line of raised earth moving in quick concentric circles around the band.
“Where is this place?” Kassad asked again. “What is it?” Suddenly, inexplicably, he felt himself close to tears, as if he had turned an unfamiliar corner and found himself at home in the Tharsis Relocation Projects, his leg-dead mother waving to him from a doorway, his forgotten friends and siblings waiting for him to join a game of scootball.
“Come,” said Moneta and there was no mistaking the urgency in her voice. She pulled Kassad toward the glowing oval. He watched the others and the dome of stars until he stepped through and the view was lost to sight.
They stepped out into darkness, and it took the briefest of seconds for the filters in Kassad’s skinsuit to compensate his vision. They were at the base of the Crystal Monolith in the Valley of the Time Tombs on Hyperion. It was night. Clouds boiled overhead, and a storm was raging. Only a pulsing glow from the Tombs themselves illuminated the scene. Kassad felt a sick lurch of loss for the clean, well-lighted place they had just left, and then his mind focused on what he was seeing.
Sol Weintraub and Brawne Lamia were half a klick down the valley, Sol bending over the woman as she lay near the front of the Jade Tomb. Wind swirled dust around them so thickly that they did not see the Shrike moving like another shadow down the trail past the Obelisk, toward them.
Fedmahn Kassad stepped off the dark marble in front of the Monolith and skirted the shattered crystal shards which littered the path. He realized that Moneta still clung to his arm.
“If you fight again,” she said, her voice soft and urgent in his ear, “the Shrike will kill you.”
“They’re my friends,” said Kassad. His FORCE gear and torn armor lay where Moneta had thrown it hours earlier. He searched the Monolith until he found his assault rifle and a bandolier of grenades, saw the rifle was still functional, checked charges and clicked off safeties, left the Monolith, and stepped forward at double time to intercept the Shrike.
I wake to the sound of water flowing, and for a second I believe I am awakening from my nap near the waterfall of Lodore during my walking tour with Brown. But the darkness when I open my eyes is as fearsome as when I slept, the water has a sick, trickling sound rather than the rush of the cataract which Southey would someday make famous in his poem, and I feel terrible—not merely sick with the sore throat I came down with on our tour after Brown and I foolishly climbed Skiddaw before breakfast—but mortally, fearfully ill, with my body aching with something deeper than ague while phlegm and fire bubble in my chest and belly.
I rise and feel my way to the window by touch. A dim light comes under the door from Leigh Hunt’s room, and I realize that he has gone to sleep with the lamp still lit. That would not have been a bad thing for me to have done, but it is too late to light it now as I feel my way to the lighter rectangle of outer darkness set into the deeper darkness of the room.
The air is fresh and filled with the scent of rain. I realize that the sound that woke me is thunder as lightning flashes over the rooftops of Rome. No lights burn in the city. By leaning slightly out of the open window, I can see the stairs above the Piazza all slick with rain and the towers of Trinità dei Monti outlined blackly against lightning flashes. The wind that blows down those steps is chill, and I move back to the bed to pull a blanket around me before dragging a chair to the window and sitting there, looking out, thinking.
I remember my brother Tom during those last weeks and days, his face and body contorted with the terrible effort to breathe. I remember my mother and how pale she looked, her face almost shining in the gloom of the darkened room. My sister and I were allowed to touch her clammy hand, kiss her fevered lips, and then withdraw. I remember that once I furtively wiped my lips as I left that room, glancing sideways to see if my sister or others had seen my sinful act.
When Dr. Clark and an Italian surgeon opened Keats’s body less than thirty hours after he had died, they found, as Severn later wrote a friend, “… the worst possible Consumption—the lungs were intirely destroyed—the cells were quite gone.” Neither Dr. Clark nor the Italian surgeon could imagine how Keats had lived those last two months or more.
I think of this as I sit in the darkened room and look out on the darkened Piazza, all the while listening to the boiling in my chest and throat, feeling the pain like fire inside and the worse pain from the cries in my mind: cries from Martin Silenus on the tree, suffering for writing the poetry I had been too frail and cowardly to finish; cries from Fedmahn Kassad as he prepares to die at the claws of the Shrike; cries from the Consul as he is forced into betrayal a second time; cries from thousands of Templar throats as they bewail the death of both their world and their brother Het Masteen; cries from Brawne Lamia as she thinks of her dead lover, my twin; cries from Paul Duré as he lies fighting burns and the shock of memory, all too aware of the waiting cruciforms on his chest; cries from Sol Weintraub as he beats his fist on the earth of Hyperion, calling for his child, the infant cries of Rachel still in our ears.
“Goddamn,” I say softly, beating my fist against the stone and mortar of the window frame. “Goddamn.”
After a while, just as the first hint of paleness promises dawn, I move away from the window, find my bed, and lie down just a moment to close my eyes.
Governor-General Theo Lane awoke to the sound of music. He blinked and looked around, recognizing the nearby nutrient tank and ship’s surgery as if from a dream. Theo realized that he was wearing soft, black pajamas and had been sleeping on the surgery’s examination couch. The past twelve hours began to stitch themselves together from Theo’s patches of memory: being raised from the treatment tank, sensors being applied, the Consul and another man leaning over him, asking him questions—Theo answering just as if he were truly conscious, then sleep again, dreams of Hyperion and its cities burning. No, not dreams.
Theo sat up, felt himself almost float off the couch, found his clothes cleaned and folded neatly on a nearby shelf, and dressed quickly, hearing the music continue, now rising, now fading, but always continuing with a haunting acoustical quality which suggested that it was live and not recorded.
Theo took the short stairway to the recreation deck and stopped in surprise as he realized that the ship was open, the balcony extended, the containment field apparently off. Gravity underfoot was minimal: enough to pull Theo back to the deck but little more—probably 20 percent or less of Hyperion’s, perhaps one-sixth standard.
The ship was open. Brilliant sunlight streamed in the open door to the balcony where the Consul sat playing the antique instrument he had called a piano. Theo recognized the archaeologist, Arundez, leaning against the hull opening with a drink in his hand. The Consul was playing something very old and very complicated; his hands were a studied blur on the keyboard. Theo moved closer, started to whisper something to the smiling Arundez, and then stopped in shock to stare.
Beyond the balcony, thirty meters below, brilliant sunlight fell on a bright green lawn stretching to an horizon far too close. On
that lawn, clusters of people sat and lay in relaxed postures, obviously listening to the Consul’s impromptu concert. But what people!
Theo could see tall, thin people, looking like the aesthetes of Epsilon Eridani, pale and bald in their wispy blue robes, but beside them and beyond them an amazing multitude of human types sat listening—more varieties than the Web had ever seen: humans cloaked in fur and scales; humans with bodies like bees and eyes to match, multifaceted receptors and antennae; humans as fragile and thin as wire sculptures, great black wings extending from their thin shoulders and folding around them like capes; humans apparently designed for massive-g worlds, short and stout and muscular as cape buffalo, making Lusians look fragile in comparison; humans with short bodies and long arms covered with orange fur, only their pale and sensitive faces separating them from some holo of Old Earth’s long-extinct orangutans; and other humans looking more lemur than humanoid, more aquiline or leonine or ursine or anthropoid than manlike. Yet somehow Theo knew at once that these were human beings, as shocking as their differences were. Their attentive gazes, their relaxed postures, and a hundred other subtle human attributes—down to the way a butterfly-winged mother cradled a butterfly-winged child in her arms—all gave testimony to a common humanity which Theo could not deny.
Melio Arundez turned, smiled at Theo’s expression, and whispered, “Ousters.”
Stunned, Theo Lane could do little more than shake his head and listen to the music. Ousters were barbarians, not these beautiful and sometimes ethereal creatures. Ouster captives on Bressia, not to mention the bodies of their infantry dead, had been of a uniform body sort—tall, yes, thin, yes, but decidedly more Web standard than this dizzying display of variety.
Theo shook his head again as the Consul’s piano piece rose to a crescendo and ended on a definitive note. The hundreds of beings in the field beyond applauded, the sound high and soft in the thin air, and then Theo watched as they stood, stretched, and headed different ways … some walking quickly over the disturbingly near horizon, others unfolding eight-meter wings and flying away. Still others moved toward the base of the Consul’s ship.
The Consul stood, saw Theo, and smiled. He clapped the younger man on the shoulder. “Theo, just in time. We’ll be negotiating soon.”
Theo Lane blinked. Three Ousters landed on the balcony and folded their great wings behind them. Each of the men was heavily furred and differently marked and striped, their pelts as organic and convincing as any wild creature’s.
“As delightful as always,” the closest Ouster said to the Consul. The Ouster’s face was leonine—broad nose and golden eyes framed by a ruff of tawny fur. “The last piece was Mozart’s Fantasia in D Minor, KV. 397, was it not?”
“It was,” said the Consul. “Freeman Vanz, I would like to introduce M. Theo Lane, Governor-General of the Hegemony Protectorate world of Hyperion.”
The lion gaze turned on Theo. “An honor,” said Freeman Vanz and extended a furred hand.
Theo shook it. “A pleasure to meet you, sir.” Theo wondered if he were actually still in the recovery tank, dreaming this. The sunlight on his face and the firm palm against his suggested otherwise.
Freeman Vanz turned back to the Consul. “On behalf of the Aggregate, I thank you for that concert. It has been too many years since we have heard you play, my friend.” He glanced around. “We can hold the talks here or at one of the administrative compounds, at your convenience.”
The Consul hesitated only a second. “There are three of us, Freeman Vanz. Many of you. We will join you.”
The lion head nodded and glanced skyward. “We will send a boat for your crossing.” He and the other two moved to the railing and stepped off, falling several meters before unfurling their complex wings and flying toward the horizon.
“Jesus,” whispered Theo. He gripped the Consul’s forearm. “Where are we?”
“The Swarm,” said the Consul, covering the Steinway’s keyboard. He led the way inside, waited for Arundez to step back, and then brought the balcony in.
“And what are we going to negotiate?” asked Theo.
The Consul rubbed his eyes. It looked as if the man had slept little or not at all during the ten or twelve hours Theo had been healing.
“That depends upon CEO Gladstone’s next message,” said the Consul and nodded toward where the holopit misted with transmission columns. A fatline squirt was being decoded on the ship’s one-time pad at that moment.
Meina Gladstone stepped into the Government House infirmary and was escorted by waiting doctors to the recovery bay where Father Paul Duré lay. “How is he?” she asked the first doctor, the CEO’s own physician.
“Second-degree flash burns over about a third of his body,” answered Dr. Irma Androneva. “He lost his eyebrows and some hair … he didn’t have that much to start with … and there were some tertiary radiation burns on the left side of his face and body. We’ve completed the epidermal regeneration and given RNA template injections. He’s in no pain and conscious. There is the problem of the cruciform parasites on his chest, but that is of no immediate danger to the patient.”
“Tertiary radation burns,” said Gladstone, stopping for a moment just out of earshot of the cubicle where Duré waited. “Plasma bombs?”
“Yes,” answered another doctor whom Gladstone did not recognize. “We’re certain that this man ’cast in from God’s Grove a second or two before the farcaster connection was cut.”
“All right,” said Gladstone, stopping by the floating pallet where Duré rested, “I wish to speak to the gentleman alone, please.”
The doctors glanced at one another, waved a mech nurse to its wall storage, and closed the portal to the ward room as they departed.
“Father Duré?” asked Gladstone, recognizing the priest from his holos and Severn’s descriptions during the pilgrimage. Duré’s face was red and mottled now, and it glistened from regeneration gel and spray-on painkiller. He was still a man of striking appearance.
“CEO,” whispered the priest and made as if to sit up.
Gladstone set a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Rest,” she said. “Do you feel like telling me what happened?”
Duré nodded. There were tears in the old Jesuit’s eyes. “The True Voice of the Worldtree didn’t believe that they would really attack,” he whispered, his voice raw. “Sek Hardeen thought that the Templars had some pact with the Ousters … some arrangement. But they did attack. Tactical lances, plasma devices, nuclear explosives, I think …”
“Yes,” said Gladstone, “we monitored it from the War Room. I need to know everything, Father Duré. Everything from the point when you stepped into the Cave Tomb on Hyperion.”
Paul Duré’s eyes focused on Gladstone’s face. “You know about that?”
“Yes. And about most other things to that point. But I need to know more. Much more.”
Duré closed his eyes. “The labyrinth …”
“What?”
“The labyrinth,” he said again, voice stronger. He cleared his throat and told her about his voyage through the tunnels of corpses, the transition to a FORCE ship and his meeting with Severn on Pacem.
“And you’re sure Severn was headed here? To Government House?” asked Gladstone.
“Yes. He and your aide … Hunt. Both of them intended to ’cast here.”
Gladstone nodded and carefully touched an unburned section of the priest’s shoulder. “Father, things are happening very quickly here. Severn is missing and so is Leigh Hunt. I need advice about Hyperion. Will you stay with me?”
Duré looked confused for a moment. “I need to get back. Back to Hyperion, M. Executive. Sol and the others are waiting for me.”
“I understand,” said Gladstone soothingly. “As soon as there’s a way back to Hyperion, I’ll expedite your return. Right now, however, the Web is under brutal attack. Millions are dying or in danger of dying. I need your help, Father. Can I count on you until then?”
Paul Duré sighed and la
y back. “Yes, M. Executive. But I have no idea how I—”
There was a soft knock and Sedeptra Akasi entered and handed Gladstone a message flimsy. The CEO smiled. “I said that things were happening quickly, Father. Here’s another development. A message from Pacem says that the College of Cardinals has met in the Sistine Chapel …” Gladstone raised an eyebrow. “I forget, Father, is that the Sistine Chapel?”
“Yes. The Church took it apart stone by stone, fresco by fresco, and moved it to Pacem after the Big Mistake.”
Gladstone looked down at the flimsy. “… met in the Sistine Chapel and elected a new pontiff.”
“So soon?” whispered Paul Duré. He closed his eyes again. “I guess they felt they must hurry. Pacem lies—what?—only ten days in front of the Ouster invasion wave. Still, to come to a decision so quickly …”
“Are you interested in who the new Pope is?” asked Gladstone.
“Either Antonio Cardinal Guarducci or Agostino Cardinal Ruddell, I would guess,” said Duré. “None of the others would command a majority at this time.”
“No,” said Gladstone. “According to this message from Bishop Edouard of the Curia Romana …”
“Bishop Edouard! Excuse me, M. Executive, please go on.”
“According to Bishop Edouard, the College of Cardinals has elected someone below the rank of monsignor for the first time in the history of the Church. This says that the new Pope is a Jesuit priest … a certain Father Paul Duré.”
Duré sat straight up despite his burns. “What?” There was no belief in his voice.
Gladstone handed the flimsy to him.
Paul Duré stared at the paper. “This is impossible. They have never elected a pontiff below the rank of monsignor except symbolically, and that was unique … it was St. Belvedere after the Big Mistake and the Miracle of the … no, no, this is impossible.”
